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That's insanely obtuse and bureaucratic response and has likely been designed as such. I mean, to claim that because _some_ domains can get unregistered, abruptly removing a whole class of domains "does not impact the life cycle of the domain" is entirely nonsensical. It's like saying because computers, being physical entities, may sometimes break, and all of them will break in finite time, it's entirely fine if all your computers shut down immediately and it has no impact on anything. This just sounds as "we don't care and you can't do anything about it, suck it up, peasant".

> The "customers" they are courting are security/privacy zealots who constantly want them "just work on the browser" but never seem to have an answer on how to pay for that.

We all know how that was paid for. Google. But instead of taking that money stream and investing it 100% into making it the best browser ever, they pursued a myriad of fancy distractions. Yes, making a sustainable browser project is hard. Making a sustainable browser project while being constantly distracted by side project and political activism [1] is even harder. I am not saying if Mozilla stayed focused the win would be guaranteed. But I am pretty sure doing it like they are doing it guarantees failure.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blogarchive/blog/2021/01/08/we-need...


Mangione had a personal grudge, caused by illness, pain and personal interactions with US healthcare system, which can grind down and drive to insanity anybody. The above just reads as a mashup or angry reddit posts which contain generic "evil rich people" platitudes, with zero depth or factual support. It's just low effort ranting.


Thousands of people were jailed in 2008 aftermath - look up operation Malicious Mortgage and Stolen Dreams. Most of them of course low level - because those were the people actually perpetrating the fraud. But some examples: Kareem Serageldin, Lee Farkas, Edward Woodard, etc. Ken Lewis, BoA CEO, faced multiple investigations and civil penalties, but none of those investigarions could find any criminal liability. He lost his post and BoA paid out billions in settlements.


You can jail CEO just fine if you prove they personally committed the crime beyond reasonable doubt. Proving that is hard, of course. Sometimes impossible because the CEO delegates a lot of what the corporation does. This is common for any big organization or group - be it corporation, political party, gang, army, state, etc. There's no special law or process singling out or protecting CEOs specifically, and no specific US rules for that.


But there are gaps. What CEO is jailed for knowingly leaking forever chemicals or putting lead in gasoline? They are long gone when the harm manifests. My point is the company should face consequences such as loss of the right to operate and perhaps the loss of limited liability so shareholders are personally liable. Limited liability is a privilege not a right. We could require all businesses operate as partnerships rather than corporations or limited liability companies. Lawyers have to operate that way. Bankers did until the 90s. The rationale was that they would be more careful with risk if each partner was personally liable for the debts of their partners actions.


Putting lead in gasoline is not some evil CEO's decision. That was widely accepted industry practice and completely approved by The Science (TM) at the time. If you want to blame a single person, it'd be Thomas Midgley Jr. (incredibly, he's also responsible for CFCs) and was also killed in 1944 by one of his other (non-chemical) invention, so by the time it has become clear TEL is dangerous he was not around anymore to blame. Even when the danger of TEL became known, there was no single "evil CEO" that was responsible for it's continued use - and it took a long time to make it unlawful. Once it was made unlwaful, I don't think there's a CEO on record that had still instructed his employees to use TEL despite what the law requires. So if the narrative is "evil CEOs put lead in gasoline and avoided jail because of US legal system being broken" - this would have very little connection to what actually happened, however tragic it was.


This is not remotely true. It can be traced to exactly one executive who knew the dangers.

You yourself cite him. So why minimize that causal relationship? You are literally missing the entire point of my argument.

Companies decisions are made by executives. Those executives have a finite life span shorter than the company and often avoid the consequences of their decisions because they don’t materialize so we need some better incentive structure.

https://nonprofitnewsfeed.com/resource/the-rise-and-fall-of-...


> It can be traced to exactly one executive who knew the dangers.

Who? TEL was in use for 60+ years. You are seriously claiming that one single person had absolute dictatorial powers over whole industry - nay, whole industries in 186 countries! - for 60+ years, not letting people to get rid of obviously poisonous chemical? And he's so powerful he managed to even erase his name and very existence from the public discourse? Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds?

> Companies decisions are made by executives.

Yes. There were many companies and many executives, and they made decisions based on information available to them, and incentives driving them, and so did the public and the politicians. And unfortunately they were all wrong for over 60 years. That is very sad (though not unique - there are lots of things about which a lot more people are wrong for a lot more time than that) but there's no single evil person to blame for it and attack in a fit of righteous anger. Unfortunately, it's not that easy.

> Those executives have a finite life span shorter than the company and often avoid the consequences of their decisions because they don’t materialize so we need some better incentive structure.

What, dig them up from the grave, resurrect them and put them into the Torment Nexus, in retribution for something they screwed up in 1920s? Or put their blood relatives into the Torment Nexus instead? I mean, what exactly are you proposing here to be done to change incentive structure so that Thomas Midgley Jr. wouldn't invent TEL?


This all is based on false premise - corporation being a "legal person" does not mean they have same rights as people. You can liquidate a corporation and if is not murder. You can boycott a corporation and it's not illegal discrimination. Corporations can not vote or be elected into office. Etc, etc. It's just a technical term and it doesn't mean what you think it means. Stop perpetuating this nonsense.


I think if facebook code governs your life, the major part of the fault does not lie with facebook. It is possible to live not being chained to the feed 24x7.


Absolutely. But many others are, and they can have an impact on your life even if you never logged in.


The tyranny of democracy is that you only need to influence the most susceptible 50%+1.


So far it seems to be the least-worst option. I wish there was a way to enable a citizen to vote their choice but do so in at least a reasonably informed way.


The greatest strength of democracy is an ironclad guarantee that even people holding ideas opposed to current leaders', if there are enough likeminded people, can win power.

That's what lets democracies change, even radically, through elections rather than revolutions.

Unfortunately... the universal and equal suffrage that's a cornerstone of that also precludes any sorting by authority of vote value.

Otherwise you inevitably end up with authority putting its thumb on the scales, similar to Iranian democracy (by design).


So, instead of SSN dumps on the darknet, we'd have national ID dumps, which will be stolen within months (either from the government itself, or from credit bureaus or data brokers). How did that improve anything exactly?


How the identity number would help? It's not like terrorists tell each other their identity numbers. So if the LEOs learn about a terrorist guy that goes around under the name "Sean Byrne", how would they know which ID number that is? And even if I needed some ID number to put on my fake documents, it's easy to download one of the dozens data dumps on the darknet now, and just use any of the IDs there. The LEOs then have a choice - put that number into their ban database (therefore banning some innocent person whose only fault is that he made a mistake of participating in the economy) or go just by the name (which is not better). Don't see how it changed anything.


Why not? Nobody forces anybody to hire an anonymous provider. If they still do, they are probably fine with it?


There are indeed potentials for annonymous service providers, or ad-hoc services outside governmental control.

However for anything consumer protection related, they must not be only transparent, but I'd argue, clearly obvious who is behind the service.

In the context of the previous comment there was an implied equivalence between individual and corporation rights to privacy.

Large corporations already get lenient passes for breaking the laws and regulations. Let us not propagate ideas that champion for even more things that benefit corporations.


The people working in the company are anonymous from design. There are forms of LLC that hide the owners as well. Trade name is already a form of pseudoanonymity, and it's the highest level of anonymity that can be achieved. The company itself must be publicly known, at least for contract and tax reasons.

Buying stuff from truly anonymous provider isn't possible. From a legal standpoint you basically transfer money to them for fun. Since, you know, can't enter any agreement with unknown entity.


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